toad wrote:
On Sep 14, 10:42 pm, Marc Ramsey wrote:
...
So, the question still remains, why did the US gliding community make a
relatively quick shift from MPH and FPM to knots, when just about
everything else happens so slowly?

Marc

The entire US light plane community did it, not just gliding. And the
only real difference was the airspeed indicator. A vario marked in
100's of feet/min can be read as knots, they could have been changed
just by re-painting the face plate :-)

All the airplanes I've flown use MPH, but the youngest one was built in
the 70s. I need to experience something newer, one of these days...

Why it was done is something that I am not sure about, but probably
the FAA pushed aircraft manufacturers to standardize on knots. FAA
regulations all reference knots, not mph.

That does explain the change in airspeed units, the change to knots on
the vario still seems a bit "radical" for glider pilots to pull it off
that quickly...

Marc